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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27745852">Síðan</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs'>Chromat1cs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Assassin's Creed - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Female Eivor (Assassin's Creed), Fingerfucking, Headcanon, Hopeful Ending, Old Norse, Randvi POV, Vaginal Fingering, combat kink, gotta love when fics let you use stuff from your degree!!!, is that a thing? Randvi has it., two hot viking wives chillin in North America, vague description of hunting animals, we all know about the Concord remains so I'd like to think she had a gr9 rest of her life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:02:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,357</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27745852</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Every saga comes to an end. The last runesign carved, the final silver-tongued phrase spoken, the closing breath let out from victorious lungs as a hero's story closes. </p>
<p>But those sagas do not always finish with high glory and soaring, glittering death. Sometimes the end is quiet, a contented sigh or the whisper of a loving touch brushing across very, very tired shoulders. </p>
<p>Sometimes our heroes live for a while yet—afterwards.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eivor/Randvi (Assassin's Creed)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>369</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Síðan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired HEAVILY by the amazing art of these two by <a href="https://twitter.com/denimcatfish">Denimcatfish</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/BS_artsss">Banishedshadow</a>, I love both of your work so, so much &lt;3</p>
<p>
  <b>!!!Light endgame spoilers for AC:Valhalla ensue, reader beware!!!!</b>
</p>
<p>This is mostly just hc of mine so there’s a bit of potential plot deviation, depending on which pieces of the endings you consider full canon.</p>
<p>Obviously I embellished this romance a bit because ofc I can never have enough canon in-game lesbians, but HOOO BOY does Randvi calling Eivor "my love" make me soft ;—; I have some prologue-y pre-Harald/England work spinning up in the ol' brain-can, so stay tuned if you dig these two! </p>
<p>I left a lot of Sigurd details to the wind because [fart sound] Sigurd is the worst. I also played ~95% of the game with dark-haired Eivor, so I like to imagine her that way ^^</p>
<p>Thanks so much for stopping by!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vinland rises against the horizon with open arms that seem like teeth at first to Randvi’s hard stare. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Are you certain we'll be welcome?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor turns to look at her with a smirk, the smirk that says </span>
  <em>
    <span>You confound me with your theorizing and your worrying, and I love you all the more.</span>
  </em>
  <span> The rudder is stead beneath her hand. "We will be welcome," she says calmly for well beyond the hundredth time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A seabird shrieks above and Randvi glances up to see it—head stark white and beak curved sharp as an awl, it cries out again and snaps up a catch from the foamy lip of a wave beyond the hull.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"It feels nice," Randvi says, still watching the bird soar past, "to be asea again."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Better than looking at water on a map, eh? And aren't these waters exciting?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The old reflection of conquest is stirring in Eivor's stare when Randvi looks over at her again. The glimmer of it is strong in those blade's eyes, wolf's eyes, but her bones no longer tense like so many bowstrings at the very mention of conflict.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>I grow weary, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she had murmured into Randvi's hair several weeks before they left Ravensthorpe, </span>
  <em>
    <span>of this fate of mine. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>So we'll leave it behind, </span>
  </em>
  <span>Randvi whispered back, unthinking and still aswim in the golden glow of Eivor's heart-splitting handling of her body. She stayed quiet as she watched Eivor's hand flex where it rested on her thigh. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Could it really be so easy?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Eivor asked it with the thick tang of irony writ through the granite of her voice, that silvery string of runes, wonderment dancing along each word. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>You, kingmaker and kingslayer, defyer of gods and destroyer of blight, Eivor Wolf-Kissed—</span>
  </em>
  <span>pushing up onto one elbow, her hair a mad tangle of red as she peered down at Eivor in the bed furs, Randvi had challenged her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Are you cowed by the very thought of fleeing?</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor traced the delicate line of the tattoo that curled up Randvi's ribs, the arcing wing of Munin taking flight across her stomach. Her familiar touch scraped gently, comfortably, with worn skin and heat. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I have never run from a good fight.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unable to hold herself back, Randvi had cupped Eivor's face and kissed the words out of her mouth. </span>
  <em>
    <span>You do not have to keep fighting, dove, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she whispered against the thread of the scar along her lip.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Another seabird cries out and joins the second in the sky. They soar toward the shore, growing steadily across the rim of the iron-grey water. Despite herself, Randvi smiles. "I never will be able to keep you in one place, will I?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn't mean for it to be touched with sadness, but she feels Eivor's gaze snap to her in an instant. Randvi takes a single, stilling breath before turning to meet her stare. Alone in the basin of this ocean with Eivor, it feels as though Midgard might turn itself inside-out and swallow them up in one blink—and yet Randvi does not feel fear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"This is where I will stay," Eivor says, her voice low. The mooring above them creaks softly as if in agreement. "With you, beside you, for the rest of my life."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The burning sprig of tears prickles suddenly behind Randvi's eyes. A convenient burst of salt-spray splashes up and lets her wipe at her lashes without suspicion. </span>
  <em>
    <span>So soft,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Eivor has often murmured, about Randvi's skin and her heart at once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"I only hope it's as lovely as you say it is here," Randvi replies briskly, fixing her stare back on the ever-growing coast, "if we are to stay for so long."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor's grin is clear even in Randvi's periphery. "From your lips to the Nornir," she says simply. Randvi scoffs. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"You know those hags have hardly been kind to me."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>When Eivor laughs, the cracking bray of it, it flies high into the clear blue above like a third and fearless seabird. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They come ashore easily. The wool and tools they've brought from Mercia make for valuable trading with the small throng of people who meet them on the beach with one or two even seeming to recognize Eivor—in exchange for armfuls of the materials, the strongest among them help Randvi and Eivor heft their supplies to a favorable spot and dismantle their boat for lumber throughout this first day aground. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Legs like a foal's, unsteady on land after so many days at sea, Randvi finds herself giving one last and unblinking look to the west. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Rakki," Eivor calls, pulling Randvi's attention like a snare. The thread of longing for home drops easily as her running stitch of affection for Eivor takes up instead—Eivor nods at the half-gutted ship and the young man with long raven-black hair prying steadily at the fastenings on the mast. "Lend a hand?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Here in Vinland, Randvi works herself as she hasn't since before she left Norway. Over days and nights she and Eivor put up a cottage for themselves amid the trees, on the banks of a river thick with fish and just shy of a forest teeming with all manner of chittering, chorusing creatures. It seems everything is plenty here, from the bounty to the length of the springtime days to the generosity of the people here. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They invite Eivor and Randvi to sit around their fire every several days and call Eivor something intriguing, the shape of it angular and reverent in the canter of their language. Randvi cannot follow the crux of their stories but she likes very well the patter of storytelling nonetheless as she sips from dishes of fermented fruit wine and sits, rapt, to hear mothers and daughters spin tales for them all. She and Eivor are invited to share their own stories in their own strange tongue now and again as well, and so they do; stories of their gods, stories of their countrymen, stories of what has come to pass and stories that have not yet unfolded. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And so Vinland is good. Vinland is precisely what Randvi could have wished for in lieu of Ravensthorpe. It is almost frightening how easily she and Eivor melt into life here. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She worries, perhaps an unfounded thing, that Eivor will grow restless here. Indeed, there is no conflict to be solved here with fists or axe; no blustering men fighting over titles or land or the compulsions of some unseen, unheard Christ. Randvi tries to tell herself that this is Eivor's choice—to be certain, Randvi was the one to suggest Vinland but it was ultimately Eivor who planned the journey. She would not have come, Randvi repeats to herself over and over again, if she had not wanted to. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Summer is high and thick above the piney trees when Randvi hears Eivor approaching through the brush one afternoon. Her breath is heavy, labored as it is after a hard hunt, and Randvi stands in the mouth of the cottage door and watches her approach with the selfish twist of allure deep in her belly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Seeing Eivor after a battle of any kind—man against man, man against beast, wit against wit—has always managed to dig long fingers deep into Randvi's core of longing. Even while her craving for Eivor was still a deep secret, far before they even got to know one another very closely, the sight of Eivor seizing victory of any kind was the clearest road to the most rubied sense of need Randvi has ever felt. Here among the wilderness is no different. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor comes through the trees with a hulking carcass slung across her shoulders, sweat shining on her brow alongside errant smudges of something else's blood, her stare bright with battlelust. Randvi's guts flip sweetly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"What is it?" She calls when Eivor stops before the door and shrugs the creature down into the tamped grass. Randvi sees the teeth before Eivor answers, long as knives and bared in death. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Ambushed," Eivor pants, husked with grateful exertion, "wolf found me before I heard it."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi's throat tightens. "Are you hurt?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A rueful smirk takes Eivor's expression, her top lip curling up at one corner as though the aspect of the dead creature before them leapt into her body before it was slain. "Not a scratch."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi takes one step back into the cottage. Eivor covers the rest of the distance in three long strides. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>In Ravensthorpe, there was always the need for secrecy—hidden in the dark corners of Randvi's study, sneaking into the warmth of Eivor's bed together in the smallest hours of the night, escaping into the hills beyond the village border to seek their pleasure with thickets and stones to shield them from the world. Here across the ocean, without a prying eyes or the looming press of a longhouse roof high above them like the furrowed brows of their ancestors, there is no need for subtlety. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor has her pulled close in a starved kiss before Randvi has a chance to draw a full breath. It's precisely the way she likes it. Eivor's hands, gripped to her arm and clasped tight to her waist, are warm as Saxon sins through the linen of Randvi's shift, and Eivor advances until Randvi is pressed back against the sturdy edge of the table she finished building last week. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"A far cry from our tent on first arrival," Randvi gasps up at the roof as Eivor sucks on the knot of Randvi's collar and works swiftly at the stays of her own trousers, "isn't it?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor whuffs a chuckle against Randvi's skin, hot as torchfire and metallic with the thick scent of blood scrawled through her hair. "Sváss, I would fuck you with nothing but fallow earth beneath us."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi bites down hard on her lip to keep from splitting with an embarrassing sound when Eivor flips her around to press her front to the wall beside them. She slides a hurried hand up Randvi's flank and drags the hem of her shift with it, easily pulling down the freshly-tanned breeches beneath it in one swift move, and Randvi hisses inward with a sting of delight when the air meets her bared sex. Eivor makes a low, appreciative sound; Randvi twists to look over her shoulder. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Would you?" She breathes. Eivor's body is tensed with need, her shoulders and jaw set with purpose—she stares as though Randvi has been trussed and plated for none but her, willing and dripping, and the thought sends a fluttering tremor through Randvi's veins. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Aye," Eivor growls. She leans close, the unshed leather armor strapped about her chest flexing pleasantly as she goes, and cups a wide, warm hand over Randvi's quim. "I would fuck you through a squall, in the depths of Hel, through the tremors of Ragnarok as existence came to pieces around us."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor twists her free hand into Randvi's hair and tugs gently at the root as she presses with two gentle fingers, petting shallowly into Randvi's slickened slit. "Or would we be the ones causing that squall?" Randvi groans. She tips her hips back, begging for a deeper touch, but Eivor denies her deliverance just yet. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"Randvi Róarsdóttir,” Eivor breathes, her voice like a thundercloud with the lightning flash of Randvi’s name between her teeth, “I would stir up a </span>
  <em>
    <span>madness</span>
  </em>
  <span> of storms for you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a broken, wounded, perfect cry, Randvi melts against the unceremonious slide of Eivor’s fingers deep into her quim to the palm. Eivor starts a steady rhythm in and out, and Randvi presses her forehead against the wall with a spurring whimper. The briny smell of the wood, she thinks distantly, has long faded to that of sharp, fresh forest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me,” she begs, “tell me of how you felled it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi feels Eivor’s grin against the back of her neck, feels her sniff a chuckle there as well. “The wolf?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor curls her fingers at a stunning angle and Randvi manages not to let out a keening whimper. “Yes,” she gasps.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The scuffing of Eivor’s boots against the packed earth floor precedes the feeling of her leaning closer, squeezing Randvi tighter against the wall, and leaning to nip at Randvi’s earlobe. “Filthy,” Eivor hisses. Randvi’s body spangles at every blessed edge.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I was crouched beneath a hillock,” she continues at Randvi’s ear, whispering as though they were stealing their time in a cramped Fornburg storehouse in some faraway time. “There was a deer I had been tracking for a few leagues not twelve paces away, could have fed us for a week. I had my bow strung and was a breath away from nocking my arrow when it fled for some reason.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi groans around a gasp, wincing sweetly against the burn of Eivor’s hold on her hair, and revels in the agonizing pace of Eivor’s touch drawing her along so steadily. “Did you snap a twig?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor stills her fingers and makes a lulling sound when Randvi wriggles in protest. “Who do you think I am? Of course not. It was the fucking wolf.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who saw the other fir—</span>
  <em>
    <span>oh,</span>
  </em>
  <span> there—!” Randvi nearly collapses backward into Eivor when she slips her fingers out and begins circling them steadily along the bud at the peak of Randvi’s slit. Eivor sucks softly on the tender skin at the base of Randvi’s neck before replying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I saw him first, but he lunged before I had my footing.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Knife or axe?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An appreciative sound, instinctive, thrums from Eivor when Randvi feels her lean back and admire her handwork on the pink, begging sex at a high gloss by her callused and well-honed fingers. “Axe,” she breathes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi’s legs threaten with a sudden tremble, her thighs starting to shake ever so slightly with tension and pleasure alike. “How did you corner it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her hair goes free before the familiar rustle of Eivor’s belt falling aside sounds with her own soft groan of satisfaction. Randvi twists again, her heart afire, to see Eivor’s left hand tucked down to bring herself along just as well, still half-outfitted for a fight. Eivor gives her a sharp grin. “I almost didn’t,” she huffs, “but it—feinted the wrong way when I was ducking around a tree. I got it by the scruff and swung onto its back.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Reaching down between her legs, Randvi presses her own fingers to her bud while Eivor slides her fingers back and prods them back inside Ranvid’s quim. They find a pace together and Randvi lets out a pleading sound, her knees buckling slightly and pitching her in a closer press to the timbers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I got my hand around its jaw,” Eivor hisses, her teeth scraping the shell of Randvi’s ear and her clothing rasping as she fucks into both Randvi and herself with that frightening dexterity of hers, “pulled its head back, and ended it cleanly. He didn’t even have a chance to cry.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>As if woven into the saccharine poetics of fate, Randvi lets fly another whimper of her own as the blinding flame of bliss mounts before her. She feels it in her throat, in her mouth already as though she has swallowed the sun—were she Hati himself, she thinks wildly, she would let Eivor slaughter her over and over again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eivor,” Randvi breathes, the name an oath as it always has been. Her skin is afire. Eivor’s own breath hitches.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Eivor—!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The pitch of perfection is too much, and Randvi meets it like a ship reaching the world’s edge. She shouts with a shatter around Eivor’s name once more—she will never tire of crying out her name in honest euphoria, the very title of her heart’s truth in far more ways that she had ever let herself dream of believing. Her body shudders as she spills invisibly with that force of adoration, pleasure, the flood of glory into her blood, and Eivor is naught but a moment and a half behind her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They collapse into one another against the wall, breathing hard on the same clutch of air until Eivor steps back with a short groan of effort. Randvi sniffs a laugh, love-drunk. “We’re getting old,” she murmurs. Eivor gives her a grin made of contentment and honey-bright ease.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Never imagined I’d have the chance.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A sharp jot of despair stabs into Randvi’s heart meat, but she shrugs it away like a foul wind. This is not the place for regret. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor kisses her and helps her right her clothing, letting her hands linger and drag along Randvi’s skin and nearly dissolving them both into a second round. But Randvi musters her strength in the face of Eivor’s charm, rolls up her sleeves, and sets to helping dismantle the wolf to manageable pieces from its fur to its flesh to its very bone.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Summer passes in a steady, pleasant drag like a hand through still water. Autumn rises up with a breathtaking turn of foliage in flaming oranges, yellows, reds, and Randvi remembers fondly all the stories Eivor brought back when she first came to Vinland.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Together, they braid their lengthening hair and tend to the scrap of earth they call home until it truly feels it. Randvi does her best to exercise Eivor’s battle skills in a clearing beyond the river, but after long enough there comes an unsaid understanding that Eivor will never again have to outwit another human blade to blade. She softens very steadily about her edges—her body remains a harrowing arrowhead of sinew and strength, but the way Eivor carries herself relaxes into that of a woman who has finally found contentment.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Randvi still finds pockets of doubt in her own heart. Not doubt for her affection or the compulsion to take care of her vikingr, but doubt for Eivor’s willingness to unshoulder her quest for the afterlife she has always deserved.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The first crisp evening on the cusp of summer’s end sees the two of them seated in the grass beyond their hut, Randvi’s best attempt at Tekla’s mead recipe poured deep for each of them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Do you miss it?” Randvi asks after Eivor closes a short tale of one of her misadventures in Cent. Eivor tips her head for clarity, and Randvi quickly swallows her mouthful of mead. “Raiding.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor pulls a face and shrugs. “I look at it all now—the petitioning, the reaching, that...craving to rule something, that was not a compulsion that came from me.” She takes a long drink before shaking her head to herself. “That was Sigurd’s ploy. I only wanted to fight well and honorably, do right by my father.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi’s gut lurches with the mention of Sigurd. They do not speak of her past husband directly, only ever in adjacent mentions of </span>
  <em>
    <span>him. </span>
  </em>
  <span>His name is like the flash of a blade in a place of sanctuary.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You came to tolerate, if not like many of them, didn’t you? The Saxons?” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor gives her a sideways smile, clearly humoring her. “If they didn’t want to see my head on a pike, yes. There were some who grew on me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Unbidden, the image of Eivor strapped thick with her weapons and best armor as Randvi gave her the farewells that always felt too pale on the Ravensthorpe dock spins up in the mists of Randvi’s memory. Eivor shone with readiness whenever she left to make another ally, eagerness, bursting at her seams to take flight to the next importance, and Randvi marveled at her each and every time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vinland is not that.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi pours herself another horn of mead from the bladder beside her. She manages not to let her hands shake, but raven-eyed Eivor stills her with a peculiar look. “Is something the matter, kærr?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She almost deflects the truth, but she could just as well bring herself to lie to Eivor as she could swim the entire journey back to England. Randvi swallows and does not look away. “I am afraid you’ll grow to hate me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor's stare is incredulous. She downs a wide sip of mead, her gaze fixed on Randvi, and takes her time wiping her lip when she lowers the horn. "And how the fuck could I ever do that?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi finds her eyes welling up, the interminable freedom of this place somehow making her more prone to tears than she has been in years. "I... took you away," she stammers. Her fingers tremble slightly and bite into the worn smoothness of her drinking horn, the one she has had since before her wedding. "You only wield an axe here to build things. The only blood you spill is on the hunt. We are the only ones here for many lengths, and we do not share a language with the people who belong to this land."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>With a shrug, Evior makes a neutral expression. "I like building things," she murmurs, her profile touched by the gold evening light on all her high points. She takes another long sip and nods to herself. "And I like hunting, I like taking care of you. The both of us. Being the only Norse does not bother me."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"If not the raiding then, do you not miss our village, and the feasting, and all the leagues of people we've made home with?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor takes Randvi's hand in the grass between them and runs a thumb along her knuckles like scrying bones. "Of course. But there is a time for all things, and the time for Ravensthorpe is behind me."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi downs another draught of mead and wills her tears to quit building. "I miss it terribly," she whispers, "but I would trade this choice for nothing."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A low hum thrums in Eivor's chest. She brings Randvi's hand to her mouth and kisses it slowly. "Why do you think I will hate you then, rakki?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor's voice does what it always does, silvering down to the core of Randvi's hurts and worries and dredging them up into the light—they usually seem pale things when held in the strong, broad palm of Eivor's surety, but even now a marrow-deep fear clatters through Randvi's veins. "I fear I've denied you Valhalla," she whispers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>An owl calls somewhere in the trees beyond the riverside. Eivor's grip stutters on Randvi's hand for the briefest splinter of a moment, but it stills with calm. Eivor takes a slow, deep breath. The sunset has painted her the color of rich yolk, golden and indomitable. "If I have learned one thing in this life," she says with her skald's voice, saga voice, "this life of defying and denying and the rise and fall of men wearing crowns of ash and calling themselves gods, it is that there are many hallways into Valhalla we have not yet been shown." She pauses for a drink, looking hard at the horizon as though challenging the sun to hold its place. "We are taught but one of them—axe in hand, you greet the meyjar. You die with blood-mist on your mind and fade into ecstatic afterlife."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>A fish in the river leaps, twisting as it arcs and splashes back down to the water, spangling the sunset through the air against its scales as it goes. Randvi squeezes Eivor's hand. "I would think simply sitting ahorse with a battlemaiden would be paradise enough for you."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor's grin could belong to Loki, all teeth. "Aye!" She finishes her drinking horn and sets it on the ground beside her for a moment. "I think the only women prepared to stomach me would be you and them."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi punches her lightly on the arm—effective as knocking on stone. Eivor laughs and wraps her in a tight embrace before Randvi can twist away, the both of them toppling to the grass and Randvi's mead upending to trickle out into the dirt. "Is that all you've been striving for this entire time then?" Randvi teases, her nose nearly touching Eivor's. From so near, the sweetness of mead and the soft smell of leather that lives on her skin are a heady drug. "A valkyrie with perky tits and a fleshy flying horse?"</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One of Eivor's dark eyebrows arches with pointed accusation. "Randvi, Randvi, always curious; first Soma, now sky-women."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi narrows her eyes and finds peace has overtaken the tremor of worry so often vised about her heart. That fucking </span>
  <em>
    <span>curiosity</span>
  </em>
  <span> still prods her forward. "You never finished answering my question."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor looks at her for a long while. Randvi sees for years in her stare, sees longing and craving and conflict and calm at once—it is, after all, the very stuff that makes up Eivor's heart. She is passion and fury and stillness in one body, harrowing as an avalanche or gentle as first snowfall. It is, Randvi has always supposed, why she loves Eivor so deeply. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If I really wanted it I could chase down my end someday by the teeth of another fucking wolf,” Eivor finally murmurs. She nods her chin at the world around them, the rhythm of quietude that drives their heartbeats now. "But I believe I have already found Valhalla. If I get to sing and sup with only you for the rest of my days, it will have far outpaced any feast or glory that waits beyond death."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Randvi tries at words for an endless moment, her throat dry. Those traitorous tears build again, but this time Eivor thumbs them away gently before they can fall. "You fucking poet," Randvi whispers, "I love you."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Eivor chuckles low in her throat and leans down to press kisses onto Randvi's neck. "In all nine worlds," she speaks against the flush if Randvi's skin, "through every hall and hamlet, the wind has always called me back to you, my heart;" she pauses for a deep, concentrated kiss; "my breath;" and again, until Randvi's blood is singing Eivor’s name to the sky; "my very being."</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They do not speak further, for Eivor's pretty words far outpace anything that Randvi could hope to summon. Here in the wild stillness of Vinland, this living Valhalla across the sea, they are free.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>—</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you enjoyed, feel free to find me on Discord at Chromat1cs#6726 or Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/arsen_i">@arsen_i</a> &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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